Achy Conscience
by LickMyThermometer
Summary: Angsty oneshots that mostly take place during the Tritter arc. Newest one: S4 FINALE POSTEP.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: I know I said no more one-shots... Everybody lies.

Takes place during the Tritter arc. After House's shoulder trouble, before _Finding Judas_.

* * *

House is in the lounge playing gameboy when Wilson walks in. "Move in with me," he says without looking up. 

Wilson just stares. "_What_?"

"Move in with me," House repeats, casually. "I know you're short on cash, and I'm cheaper than a hotel. You don't have to pay me anything - all you have to do is cook me dinner."

"You- you're unbelievable, House." Wilson's so angry his voice is cracking. "I can't even _look _at you without wanting to, to kill you, and you think I'll just-... No. No, we're not okay, _no_, I don't forgive you. No. I have no car. I have no _food_ - I'm getting _sick _because I can't afford to eat right! Do you have any idea what it feels like to-"

"Oh no, I have _no _idea!" House shouts back. "Because this whole thing's been a _picnic _for me! Have you even _noticed _what I've been eating lately?"

"Well, considering Tritter hasn't touched _your _money, I presume you're eating exactly what you always do! While the rest of us-"

"Yes," House hisses, low and intense, "I've been eating _exactly _what I always do: half of _your _lunch. And I'm getting pretty damn sick of peanut butter and jelly myself." He glances down at his gameboy and snarls, "You just made me _die_. Congratulations."

In a moment he's lost in the game again, ignoring Wilson's openmouthed stare. He plays nearly half a level before the gameboy is suddenly ripped from his hands. "Hey!"

Wilson crosses his arms, ignoring the toy's plaintive beeping. "Tell me again why you've been eating sandwiches every day?"

"Because you have." House says it like it should be self-evident... like Wilson's confusion is in itself confusing. He looks hopefully at the gameboy, but it is not returned to him.

"So, if Tritter somehow took away the peanut butter and I was eating _nothing_ for lunch... then you would... also be eating nothing?"

"Of course." House finds himself annoyed that Wilson would think otherwise. "Hence the _screwing with **us**_ I keep complaining about." When he notices the look on his friend's face he winces - there's emotion there, and an openness that foretells very bad things. It'll be of those heart-to-hearty conversations, which always end badly: Wilson will start judging, House will mock him, Wilson will get hurt, and they'll both be left thinking House is a complete failure as a human being.

The friendship can't really handle that much strain right now, House knows, so he decides to head off the disaster by speaking up before Wilson can put words in his mouth. "You whine that I'm not _helping you through this_ - whatever that means," he begins, rolling his eyes a little, then gets serious. "Maybe that's true, I don't know. But I'm in it _with_ you, if that helps any. You're not in it alone." Satisfied that he's done his duty as a friend, he looks away and tries, _tries _to leave it there. But as usual, his mouth can't be stopped. "Would've been nice if you'd ever said the same thing to me," he mutters, under his breath.

"T-to _you_?" Wilson is shocked by the injustice of that remark. "When have I ever done anything _but _support you, and be there for you, and, and ruin my whole _life _to be on your side!"

"Yeah, you help me. But you also give me grief about my pills all the time when I'm in pain," House reminds quietly, for the millionth time. "Which is bad enough as my prescribing, but even worse when you take into account that you're supposed to be my _friend_."

"But I'm _right_," Wilson argues, also for the millionth time. "Most of the time your increased pain isn't even physical, we know that now. I mean, look at your shoulder. Notice how it miraculously got better after I explained the problem was just your conscience?"

House looks up and his jaw migrates sideways. Wilson recognizes this as the expression he wears when he's thinking hard about what to say next, and takes it as confirmation that he's right. He's already halfway across the room when House suggests, "Or, maybe it miraculously got better because I went to Princeton General to get it checked out."

A long silence. Wilson now knows enough to fill in the blanks all by himself. Continuing the conversation will only be pointless self-torture, but still he forces himself to turn and face the couch. "And it... wasn't nothing?"

"Not unless _nothing _is the new scientific way of saying _adhesive capsulitis_."

"Adhesive..." He swallows but his mouth still feels too sticky to speak. "Inflamed lining of the shoulder joint..."

"-causing intense pain and impaired movement," House finishes for him, ruthlessly. "Yeah, I know. Good news is, we caught it early enough that I'm not going to need surgery. Cortisone injections and a couple months of crappy PT, and I'll be fine. Probably even get full range of motion back."

"House..."

"Idiopathic in a lot of women," House continues, appearing more interested in the diagnosis than the conversation. "Idiot-pathic in me. Apparently I've hurt myself using my cane on the wrong side... I guess some of us just aren't lucky enough to be born lefty."

Wilson looks stricken but there's really nothing he can say to defend himself. "House, I didn't know..."

"That's funny." House cocks his head. "Because I could have sworn I told you." They lock eyes and eventually, when he feels Wilson has taken enough, House nods to the coat tree. "Get your jacket. I'm taking you out for food, before we both get scurvy and die."

Wilson gets his coat, thinking (not for the first time) that though people always wonder how he puts up with House, it would be almost as good a question to ask how House puts up with _him_.

* * *

The End. 

Gah! Evil muses: stop sending me angst! Stopit, stopit, stopit!!

Human beings: leave me a review... and for god's sake please suggest something happier I can write!


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Re-watching season 3 has put a whole new wave of short angsty H/W ficlets in my head. I think I'm going to just post them as chapters from now on. So this is **not** a continuation of the shoulder thing; it's just a separate little scene.

* * *

"House?" 

Something in Wilson's voice said that this would be a Conversation of some kind, and House really wasn't in the mood. He said, without looking up from his computer: "Can it wait?"

"Not really."

"I'm two minutes from the end of a level."

"Finish it later. Listen: when Tritter searched your place he found almost _seven hundred_ pills."

Now he _really _wasn't looking up. "If he'd searched _your _place he'd've found almost seven hundred wives. Go away."

"I'm not here to lecture."

"Course not."

"I mean... at first I was happy. I thought of how many milligrams of Vicodin were _not _currently destroying your liver..."

House just turned the volume up and went on playing.

"And then I was confused," Wilson said over the sound of the space monkeys' lazer beams. "Because I hadn't prescribed you that much this fall. _You _hadn't prescribed you that much this fall. Even if you hoarded up three-quarters of the scrips we wrote you, you wouldn't have put together such a stash."

"So?"

"So, you must've had some pills from before. Tons."

"Yeah. Pills _litter _my apartment. They always have. Sometimes I accidentally confuse them with cereal and eat whole bowls at a time. Vicodin Krispies, you should try it. Then we can go to rehab _together._ Actually... I think they had a Sexaholics Anonymous group at my facility too, you could kill two birds with one stone."

House's voice was bitter and he was talking just a little too fast... Not to mention he only lashed out this deliberately when he had something to hide... so Wilson pressed on without reacting to any of the baiting. "Why did you come begging me for a scrip? You could have gone weeks, months before you ran out."

House shrugged. "Lapse in judgment."

"You didn't want pills."

"I _did _want pills, as evidenced by the fact that I then _stole _them when you wouldn't give them to me," House snapped back, then pretended to look both ways for eavesdroppers. "Oops. Hearsay anyway - it's inadmissable."

The defensiveness confirmed Wilson's suspicions. He swallowed hard. "I am so sorry."

"For what? Are you wearing a wire?"

"Stop it! If you can't fool me you sure as _hell _can't fool yourself! You snuck back for my pad because you wanted me to _think _you'd wanted pills," Wilson accused. "Because you wanted _you_ to think you'd wanted pills... But what you really wanted..."

"No." House stood up suddenly, sacrificing his game. "I don't want to hear it. You had your chance to talk, you said what you wanted to say, and that's that." He snatched up his jacket and cane and headed for the door.

Knowing that House would never allow this conversation to re-open in the future, Wilson chased him down the hallway to make the most of the one chance he had. "Look, I get it, okay? You needed me to be there for you and I wasn't. I'm sorry about that. Now would you just give me a chance to-"

"Stop following me."

"House-"

"Go away! This isn't a chick flick. Shh - listen. See?" he said after a moment. "No sappy music. I'm not going to give you a hug. We're not going to cry together. You were mean, I got over it, we're okay. End of story."

He was watching expectantly, waiting for Wilson to nod and drop his eyes, giving up... but Wilson held his ground. "I screwed up," he repeated, giving full weight to every word, "And I'm asking you to forgive it. Next time will be different, okay?"

Strangely, House didn't answer. He looked away, swallowed, shrugged. Turned and continued on.

"House...?"

House paused. "I heard you," he said quietly, without facing him. "I said we're okay. Now leave me alone."

* * *

The End. 

poor Guilty!Wilson. i want to give him a hug.


	3. Chapter 3

Tiny post-Frozen tidbit that came to me while I was away.

* * *

"I need you to do me a favor."

Wilson was cautious at first - those words usually heralded very bad things. "What?"

House limped on over to Wilson's couch and sat down. "Our Ice Princess is back from the Antarctic."

"It must be a hell of a favor if you can't even come out and say it," Wilson observed. "Quit changing the subject."

"I'm not. She _is _the favor. I need you to talk to her for me."

Wilson had a whole spiel ready to go: _oh, you want me to ask if Suzie really LIKES-you likes you or if she's just friends with you because your parents have a pool? _

Before he could get it out, though, House plowed on without looking at him: "I'm being serious." In the silence that followed they finally made eye contact. "Okay?"

More silence. _Oh my god - he's not kidding. _"You really... like her?"

"Don't sound so amazed," House scoffed, then broke the ban on mockery himself with a load of fake sniffling. "I'm just as capable of love as anyone else! I'm going to a _real boy_, Wilson - Giupetto said so."

"Uh-huh." Wilson tried to sound casual. "So, what do you want me to say - and why can't you tell her yourself?"

"I've tried, it's not working. I keep hanging up before she answers. You need to call her for me, and tell her two things: first, I want to ask her out on a date. For coffee, or lunch, or whatever busy people do for a first meeting. And second... regardless of what she says to the first thing, tell her I-... tell her I want to make an appointment."

"An... a _professional _appointment?"

"No, a _pretend _appointment. Obviously."

"House, she's a..."

"Yeah."

Wilson let his breath out slowly. Well. That explained why House was reluctant to make the call himself, at least. "Why? I mean, what's-..." Wilson gave up - all that would get him was a lecture to mind his own business.

"No, I don't want to talk about it," House agreed. "But the fact that I can't even _call_ her by myself is more proof - in case I needed it - that calling her is a good idea."

"No, no, I think it's a great idea," Wilson assured. "I just... you know therapists aren't supposed to date their patients, right?"

"I suck at dating _and _therapy," House reminded. "The odds are good that at least one of them won't work out beyond the first meeting." He fidgeted a little and then stood up. "So… will you do it?"

Wilson could see that he meant the conversation to be over, which wasn't quite fair. "Would it kill youto tell me _something_? I'm going to do this for you anyway, House, but I wish you'd trust me with just a little, just a tiny particle of whatever…-"

"-Goes on in the rat maze?" House finished for him. "I'm telling you I'm going to see a _shrink_. Isn't that enough?"

"It's something," Wilson agreed. "But not much, since you're only telling me because you need me to make the appointment for you." He sighed. "Why her, House? I know she got to you. How? What did she say?"

House thought it over. "If I tell you, will you shut up about this permanently, and just make the damn call?"

Wilson nodded. He held his breath to hear the magic words, the _open sesame _that let a total stranger bypass in a day the defenses that House's very best friend had spent years trying to chip through. What is it that made House open up? What did he need to hear? "Tell me."

House sounded almost defiant. "She said I don't need to be fixed."

* * *

The End.

Leave me love! I'm home, Pain Management updates should be happening soon.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Postep for season 4 finale.

* * *

She isn't Wilson's first experience with death; she isn't even Wilson's first experience with a dead girlfriend, but still, somehow Amber is _different_.

He can't seem to process it the way he's supposed to. He's counted out his Five Stages, he's raged, he's cried, he's daydreamed and reminisced, he's done everything that is supposed to help him get his feet back under him and keep going.

It hasn't worked, and somehow he is still left feeling a great big _hole _where a wound is supposed to be. He walks around the apartment and he literally doesn't believe she's gone. He's not quite crazy enough to think he sees or hears her, but some part of him is always sure she's just in the other room, in the shower, asleep. Still _around_. He knows about phantom limbs... is it possible to have a whole phantom _person_?

He tries to rationalize it. People die. People die all the time. He _sees _people die all the time, people he cares about, people he's become close to. This will pass, the way Grace eventually did. It's only worse, he tells himself, because he was there with Amber at the very end, because he had no time to distance himself from her before it actually happened...

Horrible as it sounds, he is now glad that he and Grace separated when they did. He belatedly realizes he ought to have thanked House for coming between them...

But he can hardly even think House's name right now without becoming so angry his head hurts. His face feels hot, pressure builds behind his eyes at the mere mental mention of the name.

_Amber would still be here if it weren't for House._

Once or twice he tells himself that that's not fair, but it doesn't help calm him. Eventually, when he can't let the idea rest, he decides he'll have to go give House a piece of his mind. Otherwise this will fester, and along with the (possible) love of his life, he'll have lost his best friend, too. Even though it currently twists his stomach to try and say _House _and _friend _in the same sentence, he knows that he will eventually want things to get better, which means they're going to have to clear the air between them.

He calls House but there's no answer.

He drives over, but the place is dark.

_Of course,_ he thinks. _House is at work. The whole world didn't come to a standstill just because I did._

He gets to the hospital, but the conference room is abandoned.

He's starting to kind of have a bad feeling now... after all, the last he saw House was in a hospital bed, with a cracked skull, slipping in and out of consciousness...

He tells himself firmly that nothing can be _wrong,_ because someone would have called him.

_Except_ - his stomach heaves. Except his phone's lying in pieces on his kitchen floor, because he couldn't stand either to look at Amber's texts anymore or to delete them.

He breaks into a run.

* * *

Cuddy's in her office, pretending to work. She's dressed to kill today, a flowery top with a plunging neckline she'd normally think twice about for a _bar, _let alone for the office, and a skirt so short her thighs stick to her chair.

She tells herself it's so that _in case _House is lucid today he'll have something nice to look at, but that's not really it and she knows it. She's bargaining, bargaining with House and whatever higher power exists out there, begging, promising _I'll do my part, anything in my power, I'll give you/him whatever, just get better. Let him get better._

It frightens her that things have become so hopeless. And it frightens her how much it _matters_.

When Wilson comes in she starts crying, which makes _him _cry, and he demands to know whether House is okay and if so why isn't he allowed to see him.

The reason is because one of the few things House does say, when he's awake for any length of time, is _Wilson hates me._ Cuddy figures he is probably right, and that hearing it from Wilson himself isn't going to help any.

A week ago everything was fine, and now...

She breaks down again, stammers out half-sentences about how she _can't_ lose him, and then starts apologizing, because Wilson's got his own problems, his own grief to worry about.

House is _her _responsibility now, _her _baby, and she has literally worried herself sick about him. Wilson stands there uncertainly, also crying. Finally it occurs to one of them that they should hug. They do.

* * *

Wilson stands there for a while before House senses a presence and opens his eyes.

"W-" he stops, clears his throat. It's been a while since he tried to talk. "Wilson. You really here?"

Wilson shifts on his feet. "No, I'm really at a strip joint. This is a hallucination."

"S-seriously?" House blinks. His eyes roll a little as he tries to focus them to look around.

Wilson gulps. "I'm here." He gets there fast, throws himself down in Cuddy's seat by the bed and grabs House's hands. "I'm here. I had no idea-..."

"I'm sorry," House says quietly. It's like he's rehearsed this for a long time and wants to get it right, fast, while he still can. "I'm so sorry, I know-..." he winces, then remembers what comes next. "Amber. I'm sorry, I couldn't-... I tried. If there was anything-"

"You'd have done it. I know. It's okay." At first Wilson is just saying whatever he can to be reassuring, but all of a sudden he remembers what's put House here in the first place. He's not kidding: he _would _do anything, he _did _do anything. Wilson squeezes his hand tight. "I know. Now get better, House, okay? You're scaring everyone."

House pulls free, shaking his head. "Screw it... I just wanna sleep. Amber...?"

"Yeah - she died. I held her and... turned it off." He's been told House is giving up and he can see it, but there would be no point begging him to fight. House never hears him when he begs; that's not their way.

He searches for a way to say it without words. He needs to remind him of all the past they have together, to ask for a future... to say all the things that House should know but under the present miserable circumstances is starting to doubt...

"Was she pissed? What did she say?"

And then he knows what to do. He doesn't even feel disloyal about this; Amber was a big proponent of using any means necessary to get the job done and he knows if she were here she'd be urging him on.

He shoulders his grief aside for the moment, and takes House's hand. "She was okay," he says. "I stayed with her, and held her, and she was okay." A deep breath. "And you owe me ten bucks."

He waits to see if House has gotten the message.

"Try the second drawer of my desk," House whispers finally. "And do me a favor: go to my place and feed Steve. Til I get home."

* * *

The End.

For people not rabid-fan enough to immediately remember the running bet: House gives Wilson 10 every time a patient thanks him for telling them they're dying. And I'd assume Amber would have said thankyou, knowing how hard it was for him to wake her up and tell her in person.

I superduper intend to update Pain Management soon. Sorry I've put it on hold this long, I don't know what's been wrong with me lately.

**EDIT: 124 people have read this new chapter so far, and 1 has reviewed. So: props to cryingblacktears, and a great big kick to the collective pants of the rest of you.**


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